On 11 February, during the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit in Paris, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen launched InvestAI. This initiative aims to mobilise €200 billion for investments in AI. It includes a new European fund of €20 billion for AI megafactories. Establishing this significant AI infrastructure is essential for fostering open and collaborative development of advanced AI models, intending to position Europe as a leader in AI.
“AI will improve our healthcare, spur our research and innovation and boost our competitiveness. We want AI to be a force for good and for growth. We are doing this through our own European approach – based on openness, cooperation and excellent talent. But our approach still needs to be supercharged. This is why, together with our Member States and with our partners, we will mobilise unprecedented capital through InvestAI for European AI gigafactories. This unique public-private partnership, akin to a CERN for AI, will enable all our scientists and companies – not just the biggest – to develop the most advanced very large models needed to make Europe an AI continent,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
The EU’s InvestAI fund will finance the construction of four future AI megafactories across Europe. These facilities will focus on training highly complex, large-scale AI models, which demand substantial computing infrastructure to achieve breakthroughs in critical fields such as medicine and science. Each gigafactory will house around 100,000 state-of-the-art AI chips, approximately four times more than the existing AI factories.
The gigafactories developed through InvestAI will represent the most significant public-private partnership globally to advance trustworthy AI. They will promote a European cooperative, open innovation model, particularly regarding complex industrial and mission-critical applications. The initiative aims to ensure that all companies, not just the largest players, have access to large-scale computing power necessary for future developments.
InvestAI will feature a layered fund with shares that offer varying levels of risk and return. The EU budget will help mitigate investment risks for other partners. The Commission’s initial funding for InvestAI will derive from existing EU funding programmes that include a digital component, such as the Digital Europe Programme, Horizon Europe, and InvestEU. Additionally, Member States can contribute by reallocating funds from their Cohesion envelopes.
The funding for AI megafactories, which will involve a combination of grants and equity, will serve as a pilot case for strategic technologies as indicated in the Competitiveness Compass. The Commission announced seven AI factories in December and will soon reveal plans for an additional five. The current support for AI factories, amounting to €10 billion and co-financed by the EU and the Member States, represents the largest public investment in AI globally and is expected to generate over ten times more private investment. This initiative already provides significant access to supercomputers for startups and industries alike.
